There’s no shortage of jokes about the current increase in the price of petrol or diesel, is there? The photo of a man standing beside his car at the pumps being asked by the attendant “Regular or premium?” “Just looking thanks,” replies the man.

Or the video of the crowd going crazy on a mock-up of Deal or No Deal when the winning box reveals the prize of a 'full tank'.

We have a way of using dark humour about our difficulties, but in truth there’s nothing funny about the situation developing for many families as a cost of living crisis threatens to get worse and worse.

The price of food and virtually everything is also rising, so fuel isn’t the only thing but perhaps because it’s so obviously soaring it’s the one which is most noticeable.

Let’s not get sidetracked too much either by 2020s circumstances; the current war in Ukraine coming straight after a worldwide pandemic has undoubtedly exacerbated the economic problem, but let us not pretend that for some years now there hasn’t been an increasing gap between those at the top of the money tree and the people struggling to put bread on the table while still keeping the heating on.

Sophy Ridge on Sky showed Chancellor Rishi Sunak a chart illustrating tax rises and tax cuts by his various predecessors over decades; it revealed him to be the one with most tax rises, rising in two years by the same amount that Gordon Brown did in 10 years, for example.

Sunak immediately played the pandemic card.

Yes, the effect of the pandemic was major and yes, you would expect a bit of spin from any politician. But there’s something inherently dishonest about this Tory Government when it comes to explaining away their treatment of people on benefits and lower incomes.

Not unexpected, of course, when that Government is headed by a man for whom lying is a default.

There are times you get the feeling that there’s a training camp somewhere at Westminster where Ministers are brought in and programmed in the art of saying things like “we are leading the world in…..(insert appropriate policy)”.

Aside from all the guff about Britain welcoming refugees and clamping down on Russian oligarchs, they also specialize in a narrative which suggests that they’re the people who are looking after the less well-off and vulnerable.

Ministers tell interviewers, for example, that Britain has the fastest growing economy in the G7; even Dan Walker at the BBC interjected with the fact that, actually, the country has the second worst growth in the G7.

And yet the untruths are just repeated; a tactic going on since Johnson and others campaigned in the Brexit referendum that by leaving Europe Britain would have an extra £350million a week to spend on their priorities such as the NHS.

It’s become a game of lies, damned lies and Government statistics, and muddying the waters is the norm where people believe what they want to believe. We’re surely in a post-truth era.

But the cracks are beginning to show, surely? Get behind all the spin and counter spin across the political divide and look at a few examples. Empirical evidence I would say.

This week, Martin Lewis the money-saving expert described changes to fuel prices coming up in April as a “fiscal punch in the face” to many families. He said a typical energy bill is due to rise next month by over a third, by almost £700 to £1,971, that from last October to this October they could double and that about 10 million people would be in fuel poverty.

An exasperated Lewis said that he and many other charities were “running out of tools to help people".

We’ve also seen the unbelievably crass and cruel behaviour of P&O ferries who sacked their entire workforce in a video call and then had them evicted by men, some in balaclavas with handcuffs at the ready, and it’s reported that they then hired a new workforce from India at £1.80 an hour.

After all the controversy, P&O are now offering redundancy packages but the damage is done and it’s a small price for them to pay for forcing through an unethical restructuring.

In Northern Ireland, many public sector workers went on strike this week, members of the Unite Union. While there was a focus on the very regrettable fact that kids with special needs were affected, we should not forget either that these workers were striking as a last resort.

Journalist Allison Morris tweeted that her daughter works in special needs education and makes less than £12,000 a year, and “she often comes home with lumps of her hair missing, bites and bruises, but she loves her job. It’s a vocation, how can anyone not support their battle for fair pay”?

The workers are on strike because they don’t have a decent wage to live on, and were offered 1.75 per cent.

This, when Boris Johnson has claimed that wages are increasing under his Government. But what we are seeing in the fifth or sixth richest nation in the world doesn’t tally with his positive picture.

Inflation could hit eight per cent in April; pensions and benefits are increasing by three per cent, these workers are being offered 1.75 per cent and people on Universal Credit are being hit with cuts.

Do the maths. Pensioners, people on benefits and low paid workers are effectively seeing a reduction in what they can buy at a time when prices are rising.

For many of us, this is worrying but won’t leave us on the poverty line because we can still afford to live. But more and more people are struggling, getting into debt, relying on foodbanks and have been sticking on a few extra jumpers to keep warm.

Charities are finding children in some families don’t have basic amenities, even beds in some cases. Such conditions in 2022 are a disgrace.

There is, however, one group of people who won’t be hit just as hard. The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak is believed to be the richest man in the House of Commons, reportedly worth an estimated £200 million, or possibly more if you count his wife’s wealthy background.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, who casually dismisses the concerns of ordinary people over Downing Street’s partygate as “fluff”, is worth about £100 million.

Poor old Boris is virtually on the breadline at only about £3 million but he might just survive when he does the speeches and book-writing rounds after he finishes as PM.

This isn’t, of course, about party politics. It’s about a system which is wealthy enough to look after vulnerable people but doesn’t.

Instead of empathy with those people, we get a narrative which suggests we need to help the “wealth creators” because they produce the resources to look after the less well-off and we can’t afford to give too much away to people who really should get off their backsides anyway.

I wonder what all the working class people in the “red wall” in the north of England will make of it all at the next election?